Bernard Avle goes wild on government over fuel price hikes

The General Manager of Bernard Koku Avle, the host of the Citi Breakfast Show on Accra-based Citi FM has urged the government to find ways to addressing constant hikes in fuel prices in the country.

The astute journalist, speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show said the current state of the petroleum pricing regime has become a burden on Ghanaians, including ostensibly high-income earners like himself.

He also believes President Akufo-Addo can scrap some of the taxes on the petroleum price build-up that are causing fuel prices to rise on a daily basis as he promised to do so when campaigning in 2016.

Mr Avle wants government to ensure that the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) is revived to tackle fuel price hikes.

“Take responsibility and give the people relief because it gets to a point people can not take it, so you have to do a pre-emptive reduction. You do things that show that you want to alleviate the plight of Ghanaians, that's what you do.

“People are really suffering, even we who are supposedly high-income earners compared to average Ghanaians, look at us and the companies are also struggling with taxes everywhere... You can't even refine your own oil, TOR is there I don't even know what they are doing. These are the issues you must deal with, you can't have a revenue mindset for everything, reduce the taxes. You promised that you were going to remove taxes, that is what you said,” he fumes.

Mr Avle indicated that the level of production under this government is very low and yielding no results to alleviate the sufferings of Ghanaians.

“The production level in the country is very low, you can't even produce more. TOR can't refine our petroleum, we can not refine our cocoa, so do the needful and solve the problem because that is why you are in the Flagstaff house and I'm here on radio,” he emphasised.